Love Me and Die (8 page)

She said, “My point is that you’d be wise not to come back here after lunch.”

The point was clear enough. Farley and the Mexican police had my name and address from the registration slip on the camper. It wouldn’t take them long to get my description from Tucson. Farley could hardly miss learning that Coyle and Brogan were the same man.

She said, “I live only a few blocks from Chester—on the top of the hill. I plan to work tonight so I’ll have lunch at home and then rest before coming back here. We can talk more comfortably there.”

I said, “I’ll have more ammunition for my visit with Healy if we talk now.”

She said abruptly, “There’s no need to think that way about Chester. He’s one person who wouldn’t have written that letter. The company is his life, believe me. He’d do anything to protect it.”

I said, “And then you want a little time to figure out just how much to tell me.”

Her smile admitted that I was right. She said softly, “Would you like a third reason? An office is so formal—and so public.”

I got the message. I wondered if Art Ditmer might not have succumbed to the same temptation. It wasn’t a pleasant idea. I had found myself beginning to like Bonita Jessup.

I stood up and moved to the door. She murmured, “About one-thirty then?”

I said, “Unless I’m in jail, I’ll be there.” I opened the door and went out. It still lacked fifteen minutes to noon. I strolled through the offices and out to the telephone on the dock. I could see Farley and his partner talking to some of the drivers out near the gas pumps.

I stepped into the booth and put in a call to the redhead’s office. She answered as promptly as before. She said testily, “You spent enough time in that Jessup woman’s office. I was about to come to your rescue.”

I said, “You may have to rescue me—from the cops.” I gave her a quick rundown on what had happened and what I’d learned since my previous call.

She said slowly, “Do you believe that about Art?”

I said, “He could have been playing it cute and staying undercover.”

“Even from me?” she demanded.

I had no answer for that. I said, “If I can keep away from the police, I’ll find out tonight.”

“We’ll find out,” the redhead said. “I’m coming back there this afternoon.”

I almost told her to stay where she was. But she was no safer from the police there than she would be here. And sober she might be of use.

She said into the silence, “Don’t you want me, Jojo?”

I said, “Sure, as long as you bring your car.”

She called me a few obscenities in Spanish. I said, “Save it until you get here. Now how about the information on the address from that envelope?”

“I think I’ll get it at noon,” she said. “But it’s going to cost me the price of a new dress.”

I said, “I don’t care what it costs you—even if it’s a new dress with a girdle thrown in. That information might be the only real lead we get.”

The redhead sniffed, “Who needs a girdle, your new lady friend?”

I said, “It’s time to go to lunch. I’ll meet you at the motel later. But be careful when you go there. If you see any cops or anything remotely resembling a cop, stay clear.”

“Don’t let Chester get you drunk,” the redhead said. She hung up.

I mopped sweat off my face and left the booth. Farley had moved back to the office. He was standing by the doorway, talking to Healy and Lerdo, the round little man with the happy smile.

He wasn’t smiling now, I noticed, as I went up to them. He was talking in quick Spanish to Farley and waving his hands as if trying to get a point across.

I tried to look as if I didn’t follow what he was saying. He said, “I am the company representative in Lozano,
señor
. I am also a produce broker. That is why I was out to see the farmers so early this morning. I must make certain their crops will be ready when the trucks come. Understood?”

“Understood,” Farley said in good border Spanish. “And you didn’t see Thorne alive—say Tuesday night at your office in Lozano?”

Lerdo laughed, showing good white teeth. He was young but he had a confident way of handling himself, even with the law. “My office is a company station wagon,
senor
. I have a room in Lozano, true, but I am seldom in it. I work so closely with the farmers.”

Farley said, “All right. Where can I find you if I want you again?”

Lerdo ran a hand over his black curls. “Today I will be checking invoices with Señorita Jessup.” He didn’t sound as if the idea of putting in an afternoon with a woman like Toby appealed to him.

I had a fleeting mental picture of Lerdo oozing masculinity and trying out his technique on Toby Jessup. I had another picture of her reaction. I felt a little sorry for the dapper Señor Lerdo.

Lerdo walked off in the direction of Toby’s office. Healy said to Farley, “Brogan and I are going to have lunch.”

Was Farley looking more closely at me than before or was it my imagination? I couldn’t be sure. But I wished he would move away from the door and let us out.

He nodded and stepped aside. Healy and I went out into the blistering heat. I followed him around the building to the parking lot. There he pulled one of his surprises on me. I expected a ride in the sedate-looking Olds sedan. Instead, he climbed behind the wheel of the MGA. I got in beside him.

He warmed the motor, then gunned backward, swung around, and shot out of the lot into moving traffic. I bent my head down to keep the wind from blistering my face.

By the time I looked up again, we were well into the hills, above the row of apartment houses where I had escorted Toby Jessup last night. Healy slowed to take a curve and I glanced upward, curious as to the location of Bonita Jessup’s house.

Healy spoke for the first time since leaving the plant. He said, “Quite a showplace, isn’t it?” He waved a hand at a sprawling hacienda-like building set in a sweep of trees. The whole affair perched on a flat-topped knoll a good fifty feet above the nearest rooftop.

“Thaddeus built it,” he said. “Now Bonita and a maid rattle around there all alone.”

I said, “Maybe she likes privacy.”

He grunted at that. He said, “By the way, did you hear the latest on the big murder mystery? Lerdo is the one who found the body this morning. He also spotted some tire tracks that seem to interest the police.” He swung the MGA abruptly into a driveway that ran alongside a neat white-brick house. He braked in front of a two car garage.

“He has good eyes, that boy,” Healy went on. “He spotted some rug fibers caught in the heel of Thorne’s shoe. The cops think the fibers came from one of those long wear, high-priced rugs used in the motels around here.”

I didn’t say anything. I was too busy feeling Farley’s breath on the back of my neck.

H
EALY LED
me into his house by way of a neat garden and the kitchen door. The inside was cooled by air conditioning and more modern than I had expected. Healy seemed to be the type who went in for all the lastest gadgets. His kitchen was a mass of shiny appliances, including a wall oven, a huge refrigerator and a separate freezer.

Healy said, “Make yourself at home. I’ll bring up some wine and we’ll build a lunch around it.”

He disappeared down a flight of steps. I wandered out of the kitchen and into a dinette with French doors that could be opened to make the room part of a patio. One part of an L-shaped living room also opened onto the patio. The furniture was all very sleek and modern. I wasn’t surprised to find a stack of
Playboy
on a coffee table.

I poked my nose into the other ground floor rooms. There was a small bath and a study. The study was a surprise. It was booklined, the furniture was leather-covered and massive. The entire room was redolent of a less brittle, more leisurely period. I wondered if this was where Healy crawled off to rest when he tired of playing the gay bachelor with his MGA and bright furniture and kitchen toys.

I heard him come into the kitchen and I went to join him. He held up a bottle encrusted with cobwebs. “A good Chablis for a day like this,” he said.

I’m a beer or rum man myself. I couldn’t have cared less. But I made the usual expected noises. Healy set the wine down and began putting together a lunch. He was deft and sure in his movements. I watched as he put a tossed salad, cracked, chilled crab, and hot garlic bread on the dinette table. He opened the wine and poured a little in a glass. He tasted it and nodded.

“Sit down,” he commanded. He poured two glasses of wine. “There are three things every man should learn to enjoy, Brogan. Good food, good drink, and bad women.”

He served the salad and passed me a plate. “Here are the first two. I can provide the third tonight if you’re interested. I know a place in Lozano—”

I said, “You didn’t bring me here to pimp for a high class cat-house. So what’s the real reason for all this hospitality?”

He forked a piece of crab toward his mouth. He said, “I like you. You’re a lousy actor and a liar, but I like you. Have some crab, Brogan.”

The way he leaned on the word “Brogan” made me uneasy. I said, “Last night I was some kind of spy. What does this lousy actor and liar bit make me today?”

He sipped some wine. He said, “Do you know what an efficiency expert is?”

“I should,” I told him. “I make my living being one.”

He grunted. He said, “An efficiency expert is the kind of bastard who goes into a factory, puts one lever in a worker’s right hand, another lever in his left, fits a pedal to each foot, and then looks for some place to put the broom so the poor devil can sweep the floor while he’s pulling levers and pushing pedals.

It was an ancient gag but I still liked it. I laughed. Healy said, “And you aren’t that kind of bastard.”

I said, “What kind am I?”

He said, “Well, for one thing, you’re the kind who understands Spanish. I could tell by your eyes when you listened to Lerdo and Farley. For another, you’re scared.”

For the first time, this dried-up, lusty-minded little man was really beginning to worry me. I wondered if Bonita might not have something with her claim that Healy would do anything to protect the company.

He said, “And your name isn’t Brogan.”

I reached for my wineglass. I didn’t say anything. He was doing all right without my help.

He said, “I checked that phone call you got from West Coast Industrial Advisors last night. It was easy enough to learn it came from right here in town.”

I drank some wine. I said, “So what does all this make me?” I leaned forward. “Don’t forget, your niece is the person who brought me here.”

“Did she know who you were when she brought you?” he demanded.

I said, “Who am I?”

He said promptly, “I think you’re another insurance company investigator.”

That word “another” was his mistake. It gave me the opening I wanted. I said, “If you don’t tell me what happened to Art Ditmer, I’ll forget I’m your guest and ram these crab shells down your throat.”

He said in a calm voice, “I wish I knew where he was. He and I just about had this whole mess ready to clean up when he disappeared on me.”

He sounded sincere. I stared at him a long moment before I realized he hadn’t made a mistake when he said “another insurance company investigator.” He had said it deliberately to trap me into admitting who I was.

And that meant he had the same hold on me Bonita Jessup had. He could turn me over to the police any time he wanted.

I said, “If you turn me in, Healy, you’re going to lay the company wide open to an investigation.”

He said with quick anger, “Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Neither one of us is in much of a position to make demands on the other.”

I said, “Don’t horse me with words, Healy. I want to know what happened to Art Ditmer.”

He sighed softly and pushed the wine bottle toward me. He said, “I’ll tell you all I know about him. Then I’ll ask you the same thing I asked him—to help me straighten out the mess without hurting the company.”

I said, “Art agreed to help you?”

He nodded. I said, “Matters are a little different now. There’s been a murder.”

Healy said, “I don’t think it changed things much,” He watched me pour the wine and then took some for himself. “Let me tell you about my meeting with Ditmer. I noticed him following me two nights. The third night—Sunday—I set a little trap for him. He walked into it.”

I said, “Where, at Carlotta’s
casa de asignación?
“

He gave me a strange look. He said, “Hardly. Carlotta is an old and dear friend. I visit her quite often—for various reasons.” His voice was dry. “But helping me trap someone is not one of those reasons. I wouldn’t impose on her to that extent.”

He took a sip of wine. “It was in one of the small bars on Lozano’s tourist street. Anyway, Ditmer and I had a talk and decided we were on the same side after all.” He paused and added, “Almost.”

He took time to chuckle. “He told me he had a few things to do before we talked out the problem and planned some strategy. He wanted to check on me further, of course.”

“And you wanted to do some checking on him?”

Healy shook his head. “What was there to check? I’ve heard of your firm.” He frowned. “He had followed me in a cab so I drove him to his rooming house here in Ramiera. I never saw him again.”

I said, “Were you followed back to Ramiera?”

He gave me a cocky grin. “Not me. The MGA is hard to follow when I know someone might be behind me.” The grin faded. “But Ditmer was followed to Lozano. He told me he was being tailed by someone in an old coupe, but he hadn’t been able to get close enough to see the driver. I don’t know who it could have been.”

I said, “It wasn’t Turk Thorne. I saw the coupe in action and Thorne was dead by then.” I added carefully, “That was last night. The coupe’s driver was busy taking pot shots at your niece with a silenced gun.”

Healy had his glass halfway to his mouth. He let it stay there. He said thickly, “Toby shot at? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” I told him. I emptied my wineglass and lit a cigarette. This looked like a good time to open Healy up a little more. He didn’t have quite the same cocky confidence of a moment before.

I said, “But I’m not sure it was on the level.”

His voice was hard. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I said, “The sniper waited until Toby was some place where I could see her being shot at. She made a perfect target but he still missed her. Later he went to her apartment to wait. He could have gotten her then, but he didn’t bother. He let me almost get my hands on him and then he ran.”

I took a deep drag on the cigarette. “Only he didn’t run fast enough. I trailed him to the door of Rod Gorman’s apartment.”

Healy lit a cigar for himself. He had himself under better control now. He said, “I don’t follow your reasoning. Why should all this make you suspicious of Toby?”

I said, “The guy led me straight to Gorman’s. Then he clobbered me and ran away. Toby and Gorman have no use for one another. I saw that last night. And she doesn’t like or trust Bonita. She could be trying to hurt Bonita and put the finger on Gorman.”

“What motive could she possibly have?” he demanded.

I said, “Money’s always a good one. Toby owns ten per cent of a company her father helped found. Bonita owns sixty per cent.”

He scraped back his chair. He said, “Come with me, Coyle.”

I went with him into the living room and toward the front window. He said, “Just before we went into the war, Toby’s father asked Thaddeus to buy out his share of Jessup. He wanted the money for real estate speculation. He bought property that the government later leased for military use. After the war, he took his profits and invested in more real estate—in time to catch the boom that hit here.”

He pointed down the hill toward town. “When he died, he left Toby the three biggest apartment houses you see there. And a half-dozen choice pieces of industrial property, including one leased by the copper company. And,” he added, “a section of the richest irrigated land in the area. One thing Toby doesn’t need is money.”

I looked out at the apartment-house towers and watched my pet theory come to pieces like a soap bubble under a hot desert wind.

Healy said, “As for anyone putting the finger on Gorman, my guess is that wouldn’t be necessary.” He turned away from the window. “Bonita brought Gorman here to be traffic manager—and her lover.”

I remembered something Toby had told me last night. I said, “Eight months ago Turk Thorne was hired. Three months ago Bonita dropped Gorman and took up with Thorne. Is that about the time the trouble with the trucks started?”

Healy tried to look blank. I said savagely, “Don’t make me pry information out of you. I know there’s been trouble with the trucks. Toby told me. And I know that no one has put in any insurance claims to ask payment for that trouble.”

Healy walked into the kitchen and started fussing with an electric coffeemaker. I followed him. He said suddenly, “It was just about three months ago, Coyle. You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that before.”

I yelled, ”
What
was three months ago?”

He said, “We depend on hauling produce for a good share of our business. That’s why we bought refrigerator trucks when we expanded two years ago. We use them to carry fresh produce to the freezing plant in Ramiera and to distribute frozen foods throughout the state.”

He snapped a switch on the coffeepot. “Just about three months ago, when the early crops were beginning to roll in, one of the refrigerator units went haywire. We lost a truckload of produce. Naturally we had to pay the shipper.” His voice flattened out. “Since then we’ve lost fifteen more expensive loads.”

“You pay the shipper and then collect from the insurance company?” I asked.

He nodded. He said, “That’s Bonita’s department. She’s supposed to have sent the claims in.” He made a sighing noise. “But I don’t suppose she dared.”

I waited to find out why she didn’t dare. He said, “I don’t seem to have much choice, Coyle. I’ll have to tell you what I intended to tell Ditmer—and hope you’ll be as understanding.”

“I can judge that better after I’ve heard what you have to say,” I told him.

He said sourly, “Ditmer had ethics too. I tried to buy information from him. I won’t make the same mistake with you.”

I said, “Thanks.”

He listened to the coffemaker gurgle for a moment. He said reluctantly, “A little over two years ago Bonita got the idea of expanding. I was against it. We didn’t have the cash reserves. But she wanted to be ready for a big upswing in the market when a lot of new land was brought under irrigation on both sides of the border.”

He opened the cupboard and took out cups and saucers. I had the feeling doing something with his hands helped him say all this.

He went on, “She went ahead against my better judgment and had the new terminal and office built and bought the refrigerator trucks I mentioned. We were all ready by last summer to catch the first crops off the new land.” His voice dropped. “And that was the year the border country from here to the Gulf had those floods. There weren’t very many crops harvested.”

He carried the cups into the other room and came back. “Bonita did a little juggling of accounts in an effort to hide our losses from me. But I’m a better bookkeeper than she is. I’ve never told her but I’ve known for some time what she was up to.”

I said, “Just what was she up to?”

He said flatly, “She went to San Francisco and borrowed on her stock and on the equipment and buildings. She wanted to keep it quiet, of course, so she dealt with one of those outfits that keep such matters under cover. They charged her usurious rates of interest for the privilege.”

He unplugged the coffepot and carried it to the dinette. I followed. He said, “In other words, Coyle, Bonita doesn’t own sixty percent of Jessup. She doesn’t own any part of it. She hocked it all.”

He poured the coffee. “She was counting on this year’s crops to recoup. And I think she would have—only then the trouble started and most of our profits have gone to pay shippers for their losses. And to keep up the interest on her loans.”

I said, “And she doesn’t know you’re aware of all this?”

He said simply, “She doesn’t know. And that’s why I’ve kept two sets of books—I’ve been trying to cover for her.” He acted as if he wanted to say more, but instead he sat down and lifted his cup.

I said, “If Gorman knew about all this, he’d have a readymade pattern for revenge.”

Healy said, “That’s possible. It’s also possible that Bonita put Turk up to it in an effort to cover for herself.”

“And killed him when Art Ditmer got too close to the truth, thereby protecting herself from exposure.”

Healy said, “You might attribute the same motives to me.” He smiled crookedly. “Or to Toby. She thinks a great deal of the name of Jessup too.”

I said, “Just how much do you think of the name, Healy?”